Zoe Creamer, 21 November 2017
Giving a gallery talk for the Chinese Nationality Room Committee seemed like a big undertaking. How was I, as an undergraduate student, supposed to sound relatively knowledgeable on a subject that these women have been closely engaged with for years, or maybe even decades? At the same time, however, this specific audience was also a perfect opportunity for me, because I had written the loan request and the labels for the newspaper clippings regarding fundraising for the Chinese Room that are in the exhibition. I knew I wanted to talk to the women who keep this particular Room running smoothly. As I learned from the newspaper clippings, it was no small feat to raise sufficient funds to build the Chinese Room back in the 1930s. I did not want to miss the chance to speak with the people who are in charge of the Room today, and to learn more about its history from them. Although the class has been developing gallery talks, these are not scheduled to be offered regularly until after Thanksgiving break—this meant that the students conducting this special tour, myself included, were a bit on our own in generating the content of the tour. This was not a problem, however, as all four of us had interest in the Chinese Room. We decided to give a talk based mainly on Chinese objects, while also paying attention to the broader themes of the exhibition.
Before I knew it, Tuesday the twenty-first rolled around—it was tour time! Three members of the Chinese Nationality Room Committee, including the chair, came to the University Art Gallery. It was truly an amazing experience because I found myself learning so much more about the exhibit than I thought possible. Prior to giving this tour, I thought it would be primarily a student-based lecture that lasted a short time, but contrary to my assumptions, the experience was very dynamic and interactive. We learned from the committee members that certain objects, like the Hu vase and the ceremonial keys, had never been shown in person before, not even to them. This made me realize the importance of our exhibition, first and foremost, for giving these objects the long-awaited visibility on campus and in the community that they deserve. Apparently, according to the chair, there is another Hu vase in the University’s possession, which confounded all of us giving the tour. We all spent a few minutes wondering aloud where this second vase might be kept, and speculating on the possibility of displaying both vases together again—the chair told us that they were both on the windowsill of the Chinese Room originally, on either side of a window. When we walked to the side gallery, all seven of us closely examined Andrey Avinoff’s watercolor depicting the Chinese room. Due to the work’s frame of reference, a second vase is not visible, but the possibility is not eliminated, which added a further layer of mystery to the whereabouts of a second Hu vase.
The ceremonial keys were surprising to the committee members because they had never seen any of the keys in person before, let alone the Chinese Room key. The women told us that there were only a small number of keys—about ten—and that many of them had been lost. This idea astounded me—how were these small but unique objects allowed to be lost?—but also led me to wonder about the storage of these artifacts in general. Why are these items hidden away in storage in the first place instead of being housed in a permanent exhibition, and why do they seem so veiled in secrecy? If even the members of a Nationality Room committee had not seen these objects in person prior to this exhibition, it seems likely that many more artifacts are waiting to be discovered and put on display.
This also made me think about whether the Nationality Rooms will ever be allowed to change. The committee members expressed their wish that the Chinese Room had a display case, because then the valuable but fragile Hu vase could be installed as a part of the Room, but the Rooms may not be altered after their construction. I wonder if other committees have proposed such changes to the Rooms, and whether such a change in policy will ever happen. For now, I am hopeful that our exhibition will inspire future classes and curators to take an interest in the many artifacts the Nationality Rooms have to offer, as well as fostering even greater interest in the Rooms among the Pittsburgh community.